StarTalk Radio - Climate Change and the Future, with Al Gore

Episode Date: June 17, 2016

Neil deGrasse Tyson looks past politics to examine climate change, clean energy, the future of life on Earth, and spider goats with environmental activist and former Vice President Al Gore, blogger Andrew Revkin, and comic co-host Maeve Higgins. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk, and I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. And I'm also director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History right here in New York City. And my co-host today is Maeve Higgins. Hello. Maeve, welcome back. Thank you for having me.

Oh my gosh. And today we're featuring my interview with Vice President Al Gore. And we'll be talking about, of course, climate change. What else? That's all that ever comes out of a man's mouth. And, of course, the future of the Earth. And I'm not going to do that alone. I know a little bit, but not enough to carry this.

So we go into our reservoir, to our portfolio of experts. And so we've got Andrew Revkin, who previously served as an expert on StarTalk for our, my interview with the head of the EPA. And that was Gina McCarthy. Yes. Thank you. I guess that was like your audition and then you made it. You made it to the radio show.

I'm very glad to be back. So you're a senior fellow for environmental understanding at Pace University. That sounds like you made up that title and have that. Yes. Senior, not junior fellow, senior fellow. No, they came up with that part. Of environmental. It was like, should I be in communication, blah, blah, blah.

Okay, well, I'm glad you got to declare your own title. And you founded the New York Times blog, what does it go,.earth? .earth..earth. .earth, very, very nice. More than 80 years. Since 2007, yeah. Yeah, so that's almost nine years ago. And you've been writing about climate change, like, for more than 30 years.

And you brought this crusty old weather-beaten book with you, Global Warming, Understanding the Forecast, written in 1992. Indeed. You were only 17 when you wrote that book? No, no. Not quite. So let me ask you, your book, I've read some pages of it. Forgive me, I haven't read every page, even though you have put them all online because it's no longer in print. Correct.

But one can find all of the content. And you were boasting off-camera that nothing had to change because your foresight was impeccable does that remain the case well i'll i'm not unique for one thing there's been tons of people this the science science on global warming the basics you know greenhouse gases trap heat and make the atmosphere warmer in the world the oceans will warm up all that stuff has been clear for the new york times said a really good story of this in 1956 by again you also wrote. By the immortal Waldemar Kampffart, actually. Waldemar Kampffart. Yeah, wrote this article in 1956.

And every beat in that story has been in every story you've written. I've seen about climate change ever since. Do you know anything about the reaction to that story in 1956? No. Where people like, Kampffarts, got to get it together? That's right. Talking crazy. That's a good question.

There was no social media record at the time. We're not talking about hydrogen sulfide. That's a geek joke, actually. The act of smelly gas in farts. So let me ask, in this book, I mean, you're a journalist, right? But so let me ask this in the book where I say, again, I was writing this in 1991, and I said, perhaps earth scientists of the future will determine that we're in a geological age of our own making, a post-Holocene geological age of our own making. And maybe they'll call it the Anthrocene. I said Anthrocene at the time.

And then I thought, I was thinking, but I was thinking this would be like 200 years from now. Scientists. Not 30, right. No, it ended up, no, it actually, it ended up being, well, right. It ended up being the year 2000 when two scientists. Only eight years later.

So the anthropocene rather than the anthracene. Right. And, and, you know, but. I like anthracene better. Fewer syllables. Anthracene is nice and clear. It's slicker. I still would prefer to have a

that let's let's get to my interview with al gore uh as we know he's been the leading advocate of the climate crisis and if you follow him on twitter that he's punching it every single time and that was not just a latter-day interest of his he's been active since the 70s hardly when anyone else was talking about it on sort of a global scale. And as I understand it, he held the first congressional hearings on climate change his first year as a congressman. So that's cool. And of course, he did the Oscar-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. Now, is that now 10 years old?

Oh, my gosh. And so he was also a co-recipient of the Nobel Prize. I forgot about this, for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Right, because he has to share that with a lot of people. That's right. So let's get to my interview with him. And I start out kind of fun and playful,

and I knew, but I wanted to make everyone else know, that the vice president lives in the headquarters of the U.S. Naval Observatory. And we just chatted about that a little bit. Let's check it out. So how cool was it as vice president to live in the U.S. Naval Observatory?

It was fantastic! Nobody knows that's your home! We have telescopes! I know! The U.S. Naval Observatory! U.S. HNO! Fantastic! This is like the headquarters! Absolutely! And there's a timekeeping device!

The atomic clock! The atomic clock is there? That's your... They live there. I had Mr. Hale of the Hale-Bopp comet come over and give a running commentary looking through the telescope. That was very cool. No, that's just a cool thing. I mean, I just want to let the world know that the vice president's residence is on the grounds of the U.S. Naval Observatory. And even though it's in an urban environment with a lot of light pollution, the longevity of those observations give those telescopes enduring value.

Yeah, yeah. So you and Al Gore are buds, right? Well, yeah, he endorsed this old book back when he was still Senator Al Gore in 1992. It says Senator Al Gore. Yeah, I know. But 1992, this must have been like split second before he became vice president. Right, I'm sure it was when he was going to the printer or something. I feel like it would be pressure to be Says Senator Al Gore. Yeah, I know. But 1992, this must have been like split second before he became vice president. Right, I'm sure it was when he was going to the printer or something. I feel like it would be pressure to be friends with Al Gore.

Like you couldn't just be like, hey, want to have a barbecue? I mean. Well, you know, back then. What a lovely hot day it is. I mean. You know, back then it was me, journalist, him, congressman. And so it wasn't like friend, friend. But no, we've been in touch over the years off and on for a long

time. And it's interesting. Did you ever go to his house? Stick-to-itiveness is an essential quality if you're dealing with global warming because this is a very hard problem. So this is not like a one president problem or one pope problem. Now Maeve wanted to know how friendly you actually were.

So what was your friend? What was your question, Maeve? I was curious. I never knew that the vice president lived in an observatory. Yeah, yeah. Does Joe Biden live there now? I suppose so. I haven't asked, but I don't see why he wouldn't. But you're wondering if Al Gore ever invited him to a party. Yes.

That's what you're asking. That's really impolite if the answer is no. I'm really sorry. But were you ever invited to? No, no. Oh, okay. I've been to the White House, but not to the Naval Observatory. But don't you think that like that will be a cooler place to live even than the White House?

Yes, it's completely way cooler. White House is a big house. It's not even as big as some rich people's houses are. Yeah. So, except it's got the underground thing and a helicopter waiting for you to escape. Other than that. You're supposed to tell people about that. I was looking online, you know, Cheney, I was curious to know what Cheney thought of the Naval Observatory, because he didn't strike me as that kind of guy who would like the telescopes and stuff.

And the only thing I found that was interesting was that it was part of his undisclosed, it was actually one of his undisclosed locations, was his house. You know, in the term, remember if something was happening to the president, he could stay there. So basically he could stay at his house. That's how private he was, that his own house was an undisclosed location. Maybe it's because nobody knows where the observatory is. They knew it was safe. So my next clip, I wanted to know just how, where did this interest begin? If you're a politician, you know, often they have a hobby horse, but why was his hobby horse climate change? We just went there. Let's find out. I always loved science. I can't say that I particularly

excelled in it, but I always found it fascinating. What did you major in in college? I started as an English major, and I switched to be a government major. Okay. But I took courses in science, and it was one such course that really changed my life. I walked into a course outside of my field of major concentration that was taught by a great scientist named Roger Revell. He was the first scientist to measure CO2 in the Earth's atmosphere. This was back in the 60s. And he described everything that has unfolded since then. He had a very clear vision of it. And

that was really the reason why I got involved as a very young man in trying to understand climate science. It was that teacher who opened my mind and fired my curiosity. Is he still alive today? No, he's not. Did he know that he had that influence on you? Oh, yes. Absolutely. And I became close to his family. Is it possible that were it not for his influence that you might not have ever gone in this direction? There's no doubt in my mind that learning from Professor Revelle was the reason

why I got involved in climate science. Absolutely. You never know in life what single encounters can do. That's right. You have a quick Revelle story?? Ravel was amazing. In the 50s, the International Geophysical Year 1958, he had the wisdom to assign Ralph Keeling, a name you probably know,

to start measuring CO2, carbon dioxide, in a consistent way on top of the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii.

And that Keeling curve, ever since then, there's this little wiggly curve, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up. It goes to higher frequency, as you... Well, it does, meaning that it's

with the percent per year. Up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up. There's a musician who's composed a piece that charts that. It's actually pretty interesting. Really? But anyway, I'll stop. It usually tells me that musicians are running out of ideas when they've got to come to scientific plots.

Oh, there's a musical wiggle. Let me turn that into... You don't have to actually compose. So, there's a musical wiggle. Let me turn that into. You don't have to actually compose. So it's one thing to have an interest in it. It's a very, I think, it's a very different thing to become an activist because now you're committing your life and your mind, body, and soul and energy and clout.

And so that's a whole other thing. And I wanted to know the transition from just having interest to becoming an activist. Let's find out what Al tells us. I always had a focus on the climate crisis and began giving a slideshow before it was computerized. I used to have three Kodak projectors and, you know, the carousels and they would go in sequence. Multimedia. Multimedia, right. And it was pretty cool. But then when I computerized it, I started going on the road a lot more,

and it really kind of morphed into a mission that I can't possibly put down. I had the great privilege of working with our mutual friend, I had the great privilege of working with our mutual friend, the beloved Carl Sagan, and others who inspired me to do more. And now that's mostly what I do. I'm in business and technology, but the majority of my time is as head of the Climate Reality Project and giving slideshows and training people to give slideshows and become climate activists all over the world. So Al becomes an active activist, uses his political clout to engage it.

And after he gets out of office, he has a movie that wins an Academy Award for best documentary, I think it was, An Inconvenient Truth. Yet there's still people denying. So could you explain to me, you sit at that intersection, you write for the public, yet there's still people denying. So could you explain to me, you sit at that intersection, you write for the public, yet you read what the scientists say. So what is your insight into that denial? And should we blame you? No, I thought of this in the 80s, I figured, okay, it's another pollution problem. And then I figured, okay, it's a technology problem. And then I figured it's a communication problem, which I think Al Gore thought it was too, because they did the documentary.

But it's much more profound than that. When you look at energy trends, energy needs, it's not just about denial. Do you think it's like something to do with like how humans don't do what's good for them? Like this fundamental thing where even as individuals, we know what we're supposed to do, but we don't do it. Well, you know, in the waiting room there, if there was a pile of apples along with the cookies, I think we still all would have been reaching for the cookies. Well, because cookies taste good. That's right.

Apples are kind of fibrous and stuff. And also there could be some pesticides on the skin. I mean, that's right. There are no pesticides in my homemade chocolate chip cookies. Exactly. That period, the sort of 2005,2006 was when when this really became political and in Gore Completely well-meaning in his approach to the issue still is it was a politician and still framed it even in the film There's this sort of partisan as well. He had Paul a politician's baggage going into that film

Yeah, and by the way, most documentarians have some kind of political baggage even if it's not from there from elective office So no one ever accused who's the other guy who made them or Michael Moore of being Republican, right? They know he's coming from from the Democrats worldview. Yeah, right So they're they're kind of like political scientists and sociologists have studied like what happened and and part of what has happened is it became a political badge it's like abortion or gun rights and there's global warming but that means people have to see the politics more than they see the facts and that's dangerous because sometimes you can have a political leaning and maybe that leaning is correct right just because you're a politician doesn't mean you're lying yeah although it gets to uh you know and you should tweet that should

i tweet that just because your politician doesn't mean you're lying right and al yeah and what he did and and and while in office he had this dream of having a earth monitoring satellite that would continue to get data on this very problem. I don't think it was, it wasn't ever, it just recently launched, right? And a little bit of a tribute to him after the fact, it was called the Discover Satellite, which is a cheap acronym really. The Deep Space Climate Observatory, DSCOVR.

You leave out a vowel, you play with it, you get the Discover Satellite. He's always had the putting in extra vowels and leaving out vowels. He's had that, hasn't he? Wasn't he the potatoes guy? Uh, no. Oh, that was Dan Quayle. That was Dan Quayle.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I always mix them up. She's foreign, so she'll give her a couple more years in country and she'll get all her poems. I'm so sorry, Al Gore. And she'll get all her poems. I'm so sorry, Al Gore. So, yeah, so I had to, in my conversation with Al, it had to go to that point because it had been launched and we had some good data. So I wanted to get his, was it one of his babies that he's now proud of?

Let's check it out. That was in January of 1998 when I proposed putting a satellite out at the L1 point where, of course, the satellite will remain between the Earth and the sun and co-orbit the sun. And now it's out there, a million miles from the Earth, roughly. So it's just parked there, and it's just looking at Earth, the side of Earth that happens to be facing the sun. So it's always full Earth. Yeah, so you get 14 blue marble style photographs every single day. They can simulate the rotation of the planet now.

It's a single image satellite, but you piece together the images and make a movie of the rotating Earth. That's right. You can see storm systems form and take shape. Right, right. So just congratulations that it finally got launched. Thank you very much. I'm very excited about it. And in 2016, they will have finished calibrating one of the other instruments on this

satellite, which will give us for the very first time the planetary energy balance. We've never had that. We can measure the energy coming from the sun to the earth because it's a single source, but the energy that's radiated back out and reflected back out into space is over 360 degrees, so we've never been able to measure that. That will give us a much, much more precise way of understanding the climate crisis, because we've been focused on temperature, but most of the extra heat content goes into the oceans, and it has long residence times there, whereas the energy

balance day by day will now be able to be measured precisely. So that's as scientifically literate as you could ever hope a politician to be. Speaking about the total energy balance over the full surface of the earth rather than in one region or another. So Andrew, just give me your reflections on this, on him as a politician, on these projects, on the future of the world. Well, everything he just said reflects something that's essential in figuring this problem out. One is sustained observation. And we're really bad at that. And this is with stream gauges, the U.S. Geological Survey, or acid rain levels, or

CO2. It's been a fight just to sustain that measurement of CO2 on that mountain. So having a long-term vision, like he wouldn't even be in office when the satellite would be deployed, and having the ability to harness Congress to budget that. Harness Congress. Well, to... That sounds kinky. Yeah. To sort of work with Congress.

Informative energy. It's a... Harness Congress. Well, it sounds kinky. You sort of work with Congress. It's a... I wonder something. Wait, wait, wait. So you can say all that you're saying. Yeah. But what matters is whether people who vote and people who represent those who vote understand and agree with it.

If they don't agree with it, you can talk out your ass and it doesn't make any difference. So I've tried, I failed. So now I blame you, journalist. Andrew, the journalist. I think there's something interesting in the sticking to it thing and the same, the consistent and working over years rather than some kind of like spasmodic Hercules move.

So is there something that like normal people can do each day to like work towards helping? Like it seems like that's what he's trying to do. Well, there's a guy named Michael Sivak at University of Michigan who just studies transportation and he just recently calculated what would the one thing be that everyone in America could do that would make the biggest difference? And it's like an order of magnitude difference. It's drive. So for normal people, that would be a factor of 10 difference. Sorry, yeah. You said order of magnitude. Sorry, sorry.

Okay, that's my jargon. Right, that's fine. So it's multiple. It's driving. Okay, driving. Either driving a car that's twice as efficient or driving half as much. And that's a 5% Or not at all.

Well, right in New York City or wherever you can. So that would be a 5% reduction in the country's emissions of carbon dioxide. Everything else, like making your house more energy efficient, whatever, is like literally 10 times less impactful. But there's America, Jack. Oh, I know. And Texas is a big, long state with lots of driving to do. So it's kind of like, and by the way, incremental change is not going to get you there. You know, that's why since that same period, 2006, I've been writing about our utter disinvestment in the basic sciences that you would need to foster to take our emissions of this gas to zero later in the century.

When StarTalk continues, we're going to take on other topics such as where are we with clean energy where is it now where is it going what's on the horizon what new technologies will enable it i've touched on some of them i've been to some clean energy conferences it's kind of fun to see what human ingenuity can come up with but is it enough or is it too late when start talk continues Welcome back to Star Talk. I am Neil deGrasse Tyson, and I'm with my co-host Maeve Higgins. Hello. Are you still just off the boat, or when do we stop saying that? No, I've been here for two years now, so.

Oh, okay. Yeah, I think a 10-year mark makes you a New Yorker, apparently, so just eight more years. Okay, have you eaten a hot dog off the street corner yet? Oh yeah, I thought you were going to say off the street. I think the ultimate meal is like a slice of pizza crouched over a trash can. Okay. I've definitely done that.

You've definitely done that, so we'll count you among us. And of course, we've got environmental journalist Andrew Revkin, who's been thinking about this almost his whole life. And we're featuring my interview with Vice President Al Gore. And we talked about how he got started, what prompted him to care about any of this at all, his activism, and wondering whether there are any sort of solutions that exist to solve the climate crisis, which is basically a CO2 crisis, because our sources of energy

are fossil fuel based primarily, especially transportation. So what came naturally in the conversation was just to talk about solar energy. I mean, why not? And let's just see where that went. Check it out. What have you seen coming up on the horizon? Because I don't think anybody's going to change until the sun is cheaper than coal. Yeah. Right? Until that happens, you can beat people on the head. This is America,

Jack. I'm not going to do anything you tell me to do unless it's cheaper. Well, I have good news for you. Yeah, what's that? It is now cheaper in a growing number of places around the world and in a growing number of regions here in the US. So the trend line is good. The trend line is good, and it's not only a trend line. It's a trend exponential curve. Okay.

And we both know that in some areas of science and technology, like computer chips, for example, or digital cameras or LEDs, they yield to R&D, and the technology gets better and cheaper at the same time. And the performance goes up. Performance goes up. Think about cell phones. I remember the first big clunky cell phones.

Shoulder-mounted cell phones. Yeah. Back in those days, 1980, AT&T, then the only phone company, really, asked McKinsey to do a world market survey. How many of these can we sell by the year 2000? And the answer came back 900,000, asked McKinsey to do a world market survey. How many of these can we sell by the year 2000? And the answer came back 900,000, almost a million. And when the year 2000 got here, they did sell 900,000 in the first three days of the year. And now there are almost 7 billion of them around the planet. And the interesting question is, why were they not only wrong, but way wrong? For one thing, they didn't understand how quickly the price would come down,

sort of like computer chips. They didn't understand that the technology would dramatically improve as it got cheaper. And in the regions of the world where they didn't have landline telephone grids, all those folks could leapfrog and get telephones for the first time. Same thing is happening with solar. The price is coming down, the quality of the product's going up, and in those parts of the world that don't have landline electricity grids, wow, they are really installing these things so quickly.

Now they can have power when they never even had it before. That's correct. That's exactly right. So that's the number one most exciting new technology. It continues to get cheaper every single month. It is now way cheaper than electricity from coal in many regions. Within three years, in 47 of the 50 U.S. states, it will be cheaper than electricity from coal. Wind is already cheaper in most of the U.S. and the U.K. than electricity from coal. Efficiency doesn't have the same kind of sex appeal because it's a lot of things, but the new digital tools and the internet of things that are helping us

become way more efficient, way more quickly. Managing. That's reducing. Yeah, the same thing that the internet did for bits of information, we're now seeing an electron net that's doing that for electrons. So, Andrew, do you share that optimism? There's great stuff happening with those technologies. And by the way, just to be clear, because given my physics background, I must disclose this,

that wind power and hydroelectric power is also solar power, because the sun is driving both of the sources of energy from both of those. And coal is, too. It's just been in the ground for a hundred years. solar power because the sun is driving both of the sources of energy from both of those. Oh. Yeah. And coal is too.

It's just been in the ground for a hundred years. Yeah, yeah. That's right. But it's not renewable. No, no, no. Renewable, yeah. Yeah. It's all traceable to the sun at some point.

Actually, volcanoes are not traceable to the sun. We have geothermal energy. That's all Earth. From within. Yeah, yeah. Tap it from within. Yeah. I mean, solar is great and and the

deployment rates are way up and the incentives are great but you go to germany which has got the greenest sheen of any country right now and you look at their fossil fuel use both oil gas and coal two different kinds of coal one of which is pretty darn bad and it's hardly been blunted they're basically turning off their nuclear power and they've been substituting renewables which is great for them in terms of their priorities i i differ with the the nuclear issue but but when you look at that fossil if germany can't really blunt its fossil fuel use then you look at the global trend wait i missed what you said you're saying in germany yeah they are there the rise of renewables is real, but they're only replacing the sources of power that they otherwise had but were not fossil fuels. And also not producing greenhouse gases.

Yeah. It's a policy decision that Germany has been freaked out more about nuclear power than a lot of other countries. But then take it to – so that's the German case. I didn't know that. I could email you some – actually, go to.earth, my blog, and you'll see some stuff. Wait, wait, wait, wait. I got you right here. Don't be sending me to your blog.

All right, all right. I have the man right here. I ain't going to your blog. Just, can we establish that? Okay, fine. Okay. A. B.

Isn't it true that half or more of all energy use is in transportation? And transportation does not have an obvious electrical option except for passenger cars. But a truck, I mean, a Tesla, for example, most of its weight is battery. You cannot have a truck carrying any kind of meaningful cargo if most of its weight is in its own batteries. So if that's the case, then yes, you swap out everything else, but you're still stuck with, unless we have some other new way to move stuff. Well, there's work being done on fuels coming directly from solar energy. It's a big, long leap to do that. Biofuels that exist, you know, theoretically, you're taking CO2 out of the air, putting it in a plant, putting it in a fuel, leap to do that biofuels that exist you know theoretically you're taking

co2 out of the air putting in a plant putting putting in a fuel putting it back in the air so you're not adding co2 but um when you look globally the energy demand of the world is is up up up there are 300 million people in india that's the population of the united states who don't have any electricity they don't can't turn on a light bulb that's 300 million people speaking about when he was saying that it would skip? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And here's the issue. In countries where that's the case. But that would be the case if they're all going to stay in rural villages.

But we're on an urbanizing planet, and you need jobs in those urban areas, whether it's manufacturing or services. So why can't solar power leapfrog them? It's just not like, see, information, you can have an information revolution in a heartbeat. You say after the fact. Yeah, well. We know that it happened. Well, no, I know. an information revolution in a heartbeat. You say after the fact. Yeah, well. We know that it happened. Well, no, I know. It can happen in a heartbeat.

But electricity and energy systems have much more, historically, they've had way more inertia in them. And I would love to just sort of do that. Now, you just interviewed Bill Gates. I did. Did anything come out of that related to this conversation? Well, yeah, very much so. He's making the point that all the gains we're making with renewables right now are great but looking ahead to a world of nine billion people by 2050 uh we don't know what's going to be beyond

that and hopefully most not poor meaning and if they're not poor that means they're all using electricity in ways that that abject poor people in developing countries today are not. And, and, and, and here's another physics thing. Well, it's a chemistry and physics thing. CO2 is a durable gas. You release it, it stays in the atmosphere, it stays in circulation. So it's building and building and building. You can't stop global warming by just slowing emissions. You have to go to zero by some time this century.

Or find a way to take it out of the atmosphere. Right, well, that's one way to go to zero, meaning net. And he's investing some of his own money and he's recruited other billionaires, ranging from Tom Steyer, who's a very liberal, progressive billionaire, to the Tesla, to Elon, and actually I'm not sure if Elon Musk is one of them, I can't remember. At any rate, he's trying to get people to focus on this investment gap for these long throw. But he gets punished because it kind of feels like a Hail Mary kind of like wishful. He calls them energy miracles, which I think is kind of a mistake anyway. It makes me think about like in the 1950s when Ireland was being, there was like a big rural electrification drive.

And these two old farmers that lived across the road from us thought it was a phase. They were like, this isn't going to. It's electricity thing. They just have to ride it out. But we'll be back to candles and beeswax. What is this witchcraft? These electrons, you know. So believing like Bill, you know, believing what Bill Gates has to say and if he's putting his money there.

Yeah, but there are two sides to this. There's whether people will embrace it. That's the Ireland 1950 problem, I guess, that you're describing there with your neighbors. Your neighbors didn't have electricity? Did you have electricity? Yeah, so this is when my dad was a kid and they had electricity.

And then these two old bachelor farmers refused. Okay, so that's one hurdle, right? Will people embrace it? But I don't see that so much as a problem today if it's in front of them and it's cheap. But another one is, of course, there's the politics of it. And I couldn't have a conversation with Al Gore without talking about the politics of things. And so let's see how he reads the politics of clean energy. Check it out. What do we need your sermons for if the marketplace is going to take it there anyway? Well, because there is a determined effort to slow down this revolution,

not only in the U.S., but in a lot of countries. The old coal and oil and gas and utility companies are using their legacy political power. At the border of West Virginia, is there a mugshot of your face and saying, stop them before he comes in? Actually, you know of West Virginia, is there a mugshot of your face and saying stop before he comes in? Actually, you know, West Virginia is one of the places where solar panels are being installed very rapidly now. Let's take the example of the case of Florida, where the Sunshine State, the head of the big coal burning utility there said, well, it's also the partly cloudy state. They actually make it illegal because the state legislature is in cahoots with the big carbon polluters. They actually make it illegal to buy solar electricity from somebody that

installs a panel on your roof. It's one of only four states where that happens. But there are lots of other obstacles that the old companies are throwing up. And we need to work with the old companies. This shouldn't be a need to work with the old companies. This shouldn't be a war. We should get on with this. As a former politician, you would know better than anyone, you can't just bust into a state. You're on the 10th step of your 12-step program.

There's a difference, yes. You can't just bust into a state where people have legacy jobs from multiple generations doing whatever it is they're doing without having some kind of transition plan. Yeah, that's right. And we should take care of the coal miners, for example. I've long proposed that. But this is happening anyway.

The coal companies are going bankrupt. We're seeing China turn away from coal. We're seeing all over the world this massive revolution. One of the questions for those of us who live in the United States of America is, shouldn't we be leading this? We invented and developed these technologies. Do we want all these things made in China? Shouldn't we get a lot of those jobs here?

There are going to be jobs all over the world. They can't outsource who's going to install a panel on the roof. It's going to be in a local community. And actually, the way... So you can't outsource a's going to install a panel on the roof. It's going to be in a local community. And actually, the way- So you can't outsource a construction job? Yeah, well- That's as American a job, not yet. The robots can't do most of them yet, but-

In come the robots off the container ship. That'll be an interesting day. Well, that's another conversation, but this is an opportunity, Neil, to lift the prosperity of the global economy in a way that no other project can. It's the most massive business opportunity in the history of the world. Andrew, what countries in the world recognize this as a business opportunity and are taking the bull by the horns? Well, they're recognizing it as an energy opportunity, too. Give me some countries. Bangladesh.

Bangladesh! Through the process of the climate negotiations, one of the things they pledged to do was to see what we could do with solar. And they have really ambitious targets and numbers there. And what I heard from— But the United States is not going to say, we're going to do this now because it works in Bangladesh. No, no, I know.

Right. Because I'm wondering, based on what you know in your journalistic explorations are there certain countries that if they do it then they will they will shame other countries into doing it and then you have a whole domino effect and then the whole world converts overnight uh no i don't think it's going to work that way because it's not that we haven't converted. We used horses for 10,000 years. Right. And within a 10 year period, nobody uses horses anymore.

Right. For anything. Right. Essentially, just for entertainment. That happened like between 1890 and 1920. I know. It's amazing. I arrived here on horseback.

That's right. I traveled by horse, but. There was a manure crisis. Yeah, the manure crisis. Now, who would have thought that something so permanent could be swapped out so quickly? Because something came around that was relatively affordable. As Henry Ford said, he wants his workers to be able to buy what they're building on the assembly line. And so maybe it's all this.

I try to get there in the conversation with Al, but it didn't land. Maybe it's simply economic. The day you can show me something cheaper that uses renewables, I'm there. Not because I gave a rat's ass about the environment, because I'm saving money. Absolutely, you're right. It has to be that smooth. If it isn't, and also in some cases, we have this huge infrastructure for gasoline to put in cars. And so whatever, this is why there are some people still thinking we need a liquid fuel, whatever it is, because you can't do the horse thing in America the way we're with all of our cars and stuff.

It's not quite that fast. But there's a guy named Nate Lewis at Caltech, a solar scientist, who conveyed this to me best. The big challenge here, and this is what you said. He said it's not like going to the moon in comparison to the moon shot kind of thing. It's like going to the moon when Southwest Airlines is already flying there handing out peanuts. He said this to me a while ago. In other words, we have an energy system. It works.

It's like you plug stuff in, and that's it. So it's a substitution have an energy system. It works. It's like you plug stuff in, and that's it. So it's a substitution for an existing system. And that's why if it isn't cheaper, every effort so far to make the dirty fuels more expensive. So you're talking about the overhead in our infrastructure will make it that much harder to convert. Now, they did it with LEDs. They got LEDs now that have screw bottoms, right? When they first came out, that's not their native state. They have an Edison bottoms, right? When they first came out, that's not how they, that's not their native state. They have an Edison bottom, right?

And so, and then maybe new homes would have, be built in with DC and not use the, I mean. But my nightmare as a journalist is I'm constantly like looking at what people are saying and looking at the data as much as I can. New York City, this is a sobering statistic, but I got to say it. Mayor Bloomberg, before I left-

I'm drunk right now, so I'm waiting to be sober from that. Okay, go. All right. If it's sobering, we will measure that. All right. You're going to walk in a line. Oh, go. The Bloomberg administration did a survey of all- Bloomberg, the mayor of New York. Yeah, former-

Former mayor. They looked at all the buildings in New York. There's more than a million. And they concluded, based on what is understood about turnover, that the buildings that exist in 2050, 80% of the buildings that exist in 2050, they found, exist right now. Okay. So, you know, we all have this

vision of a transformed world in 2050. It's basically what you see out the window. How can there be a million buildings when there's 8 million people? That means we're averaging 8 people per building. I didn't fact check that. It's in the report. I don't believe it. Okay.

I don't believe those two numbers juxtaposed as they apply to this city. Follow up with you. Yeah. At any rate, well, you have your office. I grew up in a building that had 5,000 people in it. It's unbelievable. And that was just a regular apartment building. I was the leader of a million.

In the Bronx. Yeah. But anyway. All right. So just think of that stat, though. 80% of the buildings in New York City in 2050 exist now, which means it's a huge retrofit. Regardless of the number, that's the percent that matters. It's not like some magical new energy,

zero energy world will be there. We have to work at it in a very, very sustained way. The efficiency stuff that former Vice President talked about is challenging to do and that kind of thing. And then there is opportunity in the other countries that haven't built their giant cities yet. So that's hard too. It's all hard. Dreamers, all of them.

You have to be. Everyone. But this requires sustained work at every level. From the guy I met works in- It's not going to happen because people follow their pocketbook and not philosophy. I'm talking about innovators. Innovators, sure. Not every person. Sure. I mean, there's a guy in India, Hari Shande, who's developed a very successful business going to villages and saying, what are your energy needs?

And they'll come in with a little solar panel that's enough to power some sewing machines, and that changes lives. And they get on the internet, and that changes lives. They shouldn't ask, what are your needs? They should should ask what are your wants that's very different when start talk continues more of my interview with vice president al gore welcome back to star talk i'm with maeve higgins, my co-host, Maeve. Hey. Andrew Revkin, do you tweet? I do.

What's your Twitter handle? At Revkin. At Revkin, R-E-V-K-I-N. I wish it was something really inappropriate. You're like, I can't say. He's a professional here. I teach Twitter, too. Before the break, we were talking about clean energy and possible tech solutions to it.

And we all dream of a world of limitless energy, right? Why not? In fact, in the 60s, when we imagined a future, what we didn't really get right was that information would be unlimited, but not the energy. Yeah. That's what we didn't get right. And if you have unlimited energy, then flying cars are a nothing, right? Just fly your car. And so I wonder, can we have a world with limitless energy? Brought it up with Al. Let's see what he had to say about it.

So the calculation goes as follows. The world gets as much energy from the sun in one hour to power the entire global economy for a full year. So it may not be literally limitless, but that's close enough. And as we improve the fraction of that energy that we can harvest profitably, then we do approach a point where energy is abundant and very cheap. And to use a geeky economic phrase, it has zero marginal cost, meaning, of course, that after you build the solar installation, the next kilowatt hour is for free. That's not the same as with a coal-fired generating plant. You've got to back up the train.

Hey, you've got to buy the coal. You've got to do all that stuff. And you've got to deal with the pollution also. We're now dumping all that pollution into the atmosphere as if it's an open sewer, 110 million tons every day. We've got to stop that. It's not working for us. But again, on the opportunity side, if these new renewable energy sources get cheap enough, then projects like desalination become a lot more feasible. Which are energy intensive, yeah. So limitless energy, what a future that might be. So I have to clarify something that he said.

Yes, you can add up the total energy we receive from the sun and say it would drive in an hour. But of course, some of that energy is actually keeping our plants alive. You can't just take all the solar energy that's hitting earth and then drive human needs, right? The rest of life on earth lives off the sun. So.

Maybe give them 20 minutes. And then the rest of us, nom, nom, nom, nom, take that sun energy. Yeah, we'll take the rest of that, damn it, because we're the humans. Just to be clear, there are parts of the world that need the sun. And of course, if you took away all the sun, then all the light, then Earth would plunge into darkness and cold. So just to be clear.

But the calculation is still fascinating to do. We get a sense of how much energy there is. So as a journalist, have you thought about this and you'd see any Downside to this to having basically as much energy as we need yeah, no no I did write a piece a few years back where I kind of had this dream I literally had a dream what if we had the perfect energy source you know it's like saran wrap or something and it Just does that you got energy wherever you need it does it end all of our problems What does it have to do with saran wrap well?

It's like some kind of super cheap material. You just sort of put it around and have limitless energy. We have limitless computing now, right? We don't even think of it. We have birthday cards that have chips in them that sing happy birthday to you that has more power than. What? You never got one of those? No.

Okay, yeah, go on. But what you said actually, I hadn't thought about it, but it's true. It's like this wonderful thing, the World Wide Web, which is supposed to connect us. If you don't use it in a certain way, it actually isolates you from everyone because you just cluster with your own type wherever they are in the world. So energy is the same. If you don't use it, if you have abundance and you don't think about things like biodiversity or what do you do with the salt from that desalination plant or those kinds of things, you can still have a world that you would not be proud of. I just wonder if there's no end of unforeseen consequences because it's one of these be careful what you wish for. Right. Because as well, the immediate thing I think of if there was like unlimited energy is like all the time that you would save and like say if you could just like having a dishwasher and you could save all that

time but I also think people are bad with time on their hands no it's true no no no no but that's where you come in entertainment oh yeah so that stock and entertainment goes up actually I've been asking people recently whether sustainability, in a world like where we're all not poor and all energized, you're going to need entertainment more than ever.

So actually, I thought it's really a sustainability thing to think about entertainment. It's like a part of our sustainable development. In fact, entertainment is kind of on the rise.

Look at, you know, the rise of, the re-rise of television and what role it's playing in people's lives. All these people who used to be coal miners would be like YouTube stars now. How do you get the coal out of your face?

Melinda Gates, you know, Bill and Melinda, they put out their letter every year. I did this interview. I didn't talk to her, but her part of the letter, Melinda Gates, Bill's wife, who runs their foundation, her whole part of that letter was about time. Because in developing countries, the kids are getting the firewood and not going to school, and the girls are not going to school.

And so time is precious. In my last clip with Al Gore, we just explored, how do you balance ethics with this? Because if you don't have the power to make a decision, that could be good in one way, but maybe not ethically the right thing. So let's get a politician's, an informed politician's perspective on this. Well, I'll give you one concrete example. When I presided over the legislation that did the Human Genome Initiative, we required that 2% of it go into ethical studies to make sure that there was adequate attention being paid to that. And they have done a lot of impressive work.

adequate attention being paid to that. And they have done a lot of impressive work. But it's not that simple. We all have to be prepared to engage in conversations about some of the difficult choices that will soon be available to us, like trade selection, like crossing species boundaries. You know about spider goats? I'll give you a quick example. Sounds interesting. Yeah, well, spider silk is very valuable. It has the tensile strength and lightness. It has unique characteristics and it's sought after. But you can't farm spiders. They're cannibalistic and aggressive and those are only two of the reasons I don't want to farm spiders. So by spider silk you mean that with which they make their webs. Yes, that's right. So here's what you can do now and it is being done you can splice the genes from orb weaving spiders into goats and produce spider goats which mercifully look like goats but they secrete spider silk in their milk through their udders where it can be strained and retrieved in large quantities. And they're now herds of spider goats. One of them's in Utah. You okay with that? Completely. Okay. Some people-

Completely. Some people wonder, okay, so- By the way, that's a reminder of the commonality of all life on earth, that we all share DNA in fundamental deep ways. It is. However, I'm okay with that too. But there's some things that you and I both might think press the boundaries of what we think needs a little more thought and study. What about genetic modification of human babies to enhance this function or that function? Cosmetic or otherwise.

Cosmic, pick the eye color, the hair color, whatever. Designer babies. Yeah. Yeah, that gets creepy. I'm not so cool. And creepy is the word that comes up a lot. But here's an example. The people who say don't cross species, that's not.

No, no. It's like pause. Suppose. I'm making this up now, but suppose we go to the newt and we find the gene that enables it to regenerate its limbs. And we go to the veteran and say I'm putting a newt gene in you, now your limbs get regenerated that had just been blown off serving us in the military. Is anyone gonna say no to that? Of course not. And that's why when you opened your question with the concept of fear, I wanted to right away say, let's look at the fantastic and exciting opportunities. But yes, there are some things

that we need to be cautious about. So Andrew, if I understand the data correctly, you advised the Pope on his recent encyclical? That's way overplaying. Okay. I have a quote here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have a quote here that came out of those collaborations. Nowadays, man finds himself to be a technical giant and an ethical child.

That was spoken by a cardinal who's one of the Pope's kind of posse. He's from Honda. It sounds like someone who's just afraid of technology. But it was a great meeting, and it articulates, yes, you need to have an argument of where the science is in the same room with people who are exploring those other components. The Vatican, 2014, ahead of the encyclical, they had a meeting with Nobel Prize winners and economists and philosophers. And in the end, one of the world's great oceanographers, echoing this, I asked him, Walter Monk, I said, what, you know, how's this going to work out?

He said, it'll take a miracle of love and unselfishness this century. I thought, okay. Or just a new invention. So Maeve, what's your, what's your take on this? Well, I was thinking if we do save all this time by getting all this new energy, then we could devote our, devote that time to thinking.

Philosophizing. We can think again. Oh my gosh. That's my take out. I like that. I'm going to get back on my horse. Maeve, we will end on that note, Maeve. You've been listening and possibly even watching

this episode of StarTalk featuring my interview with Al Gore. Andrew Revkin, thanks for once again being on StarTalk. And Maeve, always had good to have you back. Maeve, love having you. I am Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. And as always, I bid you to keep looking up.